Thursday, July 24, 2008

Autoricksha Confessions 6: Growing up with sisters

I've narrated a part of this story before but I think it bears repeating

Growing up I didn't have any sisters - and I've always missed having one.

But there was an awkward age - during which us boys couldn't stop analyzing the merits and demerits of girls - when this became a distinct advantage. Friends who had sisters developed an awkward awareness that their sisters were being put through the same scrutiny that they afforded other girls.

I remember once riding pillion on my friend's motorcycle, spotting a long haired girl from behind, exclaiming together "Woot! What a maal!" and realizing as we drew closer that it was said friend's older sister. Awkwardness!

And there was yet another incident involving a different friend - let's call him Ranjeet shall we? Ranjeet's sister, Farida Jalal (not her real name) once went to see a movie and was repeatedly harassed by the boy next to her who kept rubbing up against her in the dark. Now this being a chuha-billi theater (i.e. think toxic garbage dump but with seats) with terrible lighting, Farida couldn't tell who was sitting next to her.

But as the movie hit intermission, the lights went up and Farida turned to confront her tormentor. It was none other than Ranjeet who turned visibly pale. "Ranjeet!" she screamed. "Saala badmaash! Wait till I tell mummy what you have been doing to girls in the theater!" If I remember correctly Ranjeet was grounded for the rest of his high school life and suffered the ignominy of turning beet red whenever we studied certain events in Greek literature.

In any case, I had a scarring incident related to having a sister - and I didn't even have one!

This happened in my school years when we were all just hitting puberty and becoming intensely aware of a girl in class who was later accorded the status of Maha Maal - which meant that girls would come and go but there would be none like her. She was pretty and graceful - picture Michelle Monaghan complete with green eyes. I was hugely interested in her best friend (we'll call her Bipasha) which was unfortunate, because how do you make friends with the princess to get at her friend?

But back to the main story. Once the nuns in my catholic school decided to become all secular and celebrate Rakshabandhan with a sample boy and girl. This was torture enough. But it got worse.

Our teacher Mrs. Mukherjee - a tall imposing figure with a penchant for pulling cheeks instead of slapping them - announced one fine day that the fake brother and sister would be picked from our very class.

Needless to say Michelle - with her stunning visibility - was picked to be the sister. None of the boys wanted to be her brother. All of us lifted up the top of our desks with the pretext of looking for something and hid ourselves behind them. One of us in the back row dove under the desk and hid there, shuddering and praying.

But alas, since I was a teacher's son I matched Michelle's visibility (albeit not for my looks). And so Mrs. Mukherjee's finger swept the room and settled on me. For long after, I had recurring nightmares about this - Mrs. Mukherjee pointing at me in class, everyone laughing - only her hand was a shotgun and the trigger was cocked.

Thus one fine Rakshabandhan day, in front of the whole school I became Michelle's brother. Worst of all I had to go shopping to buy her a gift which I gave to her after the tying of the rakhee. Amidst the kind of silence you'd find at a public hanging, a particularly nasty friend whooped from the third row.

I was incessantly teased for being Maha Maal ka bhai. My life appeared to be ruined. But against all odds, some good karma resulted from my new status with Michelle. First, I didn't have to work hard at all on an approach to get her friend Bipasha's attention. And some huge entertainment resulted from this situation later in life.

Reminds me of being in the hostel(dorm) in India where guys would make someone a sister because they were interested in the sister's friend. With the guys to gals ratio we had in engineering some poor anti-maal would end up with lots of bros.

Amazing Aspi, just amazing! My brother and I went thru something like that cause we're only 2 years apart so my senior year in HS (his sophmore year in college) I went to visit him and his friends were totally hitting on me at first, but when he caught one of his friend trying to get a little too close, he lost it and flipped out. I was never to go visit him again! oh how boys will be boys!!

from what i know, boys never want to make a girl his muh-bola sister unless they have A) no chance with her whatsoever, or B) and i hate to say this but she's not the prettiest of a girl...

I also find the concept of forming relationships in India pretty funny. People easily start calling neighbors maasi or didi or bhaiya. Then it gets all confusing when they call a couple didi and bhaiya.

gg, I have a cousin who is close to being a sister (in one of these posts I referred to her as Raveena). Whenever she walked past me she was under strict instructions not to acknowledge my presence because I used to get embarrassed when friends would ogle at her. Of course, she'd yell my name out from across the road, wave and sometimes blow kisses - leading to lots of fights.

j, funny now that you mention it about the rishta :) And I love the phrase anti-maal!

~sabrina~, this whole cheek pulling in childhood has resulted in one of my cheeks being slightly bigger than the other one. Perhaps you can pull the unloved side and get it in balance.

speaking of mu-bola bhais, anyone who went to college in the US may be familiar this type, the one seemingly inoffensive helpful-guide type guy that manages to become bhai-type to the few desi girls around (creeepy..). this guy should be awarded the best approach-angle strategy award. ...he made the system work for him:)

yaar someone needs to do a post on desi college-goers in the US to enlighten folks like me. i did my master's at a tiny, highly-ranked private college where i was the only desi. my grad class sie was 15 :-p so when my friends who went to mega ginormous universities tell me their tales, i feel so left out :_( Aspi, desi collegegoers pe post karo na!

Pitu, I'm sorry to say you dont knw what you missed out on. Big colleges are SO much fun. I'm sorry I dont have the skillz like all you guys to write a post or else I would. But let me just say all the Indians that I knew who hated that fact that they were Indian in HS went thru a total 180 switch and were the first one to join the ISA club and perform at India Nights! oh and also, Flippy Cups and Beer pongs on a frat house backyard!

I went to a huge school 28K+ students but never became part of the ISA or any other clubs. I just couldn't relate to it or its members. For some reason the whole idea was quite lame or so I thought. May be because I've read enough bad stories about binge drinking and other 'buri aadaten' of people at that age and I always thought that's all they did when they got together. May be I'm biased, I dunno.

One thing I missed the most in my 6+ years at the college/univ was the annual functions and musical nights we have in Indian colleges. *sigh* those are so much fun.

And yes, along with everyone else who went to a large univ in the US for grad school - most unlikely of guys would wind up with many female "friends" and would boast of his exploits among his mates...had a cousin at the same univ I was at, so knew some of these stories.

Drifters, three scary men in slicked back hair and 3 piece suits came to my house. They banged on my door and left a note that simply said "Nay!" There was also a picture of a man with big cheeks on the note...

I would go even younger actually. I noticed that a good amount of people in High school started becoming a South Asian click.

When in Middle school, it was more oh, no, try to be NOT Indian.

This may have to do with the times as well. By the time I was in High School South Asian Organizations started popping up in High School.

That doesn't mean that these kids still weren't friends with the other non desi kids. But slowly you saw the dynamic changing with having more desis around you than in Middle school.

And then it gets elevated in college, most likely because there's a more bigger population and a lot of outsiders who weren't there for your Public school years.

Then I think it also happens in college when your friends aren't in the specific college you are in. Thus somehow you end up getting more entrenched in the vast desi network.

I don't know if this is the case in other cities, but in Philly people do end up going to visit the other colleges that are just a few subway or el stops away. Temple being one of the bigger campuses, the U-Penn and Drexel and others will go to visit their high-school friends at Temple a bit more than the other way around. And thus once again you end up meeting more people in the vast desi network.

Aspi, hilarious! You make me want to write rickshaw ride stories too. Alas, I'm me -- negative talent for humour writing. If you ever run out of stories, let us know -- we'll tell you ours and you can craft them into more rickshaw stories! :)

Oh not much. we had a friend,say call AB Baby, who liked the Bipasha character back in 1999 and made the princess his mooh boli behen so she could help him get closer to Bips. Cut to 2006, the princess and AB Baby are married and singing a duet in Colombo on their honeymoon. :)

Pitu, For those of you old enough to remember usenet and soc.culture.indian, there was this extremely funny poster called Ramesh Mahadevan (www.mahadevanramesh.com) who used to post a bunch of funny articles about desis in the US.

I am including a few relevant links below. Go to his site to get the rest.

Oooh also another aspect of being Desi in college. When you go to schools in your area, You end up being in school with desi people that previously, you had known only outside of school-perhaps their school wasn't in your area. They went to private or they were in the suburbs and so on.

Aspi, I would be very curious to see if there exists a South Asian click in Middle school once Motor Sandal makes it there. Not I mean you hang out with a few Desi friends, but I mean a larger all encompossing Desi network.

Also to those who are in the know. What's the deal with being Indian in elementary and Middle school these days? That's another thing I've noticed. The younger kids were more likely to make fun of you for being Indian. Once you got older, either they knew better to keep their mouth shut, or kids had just matured.

See, I'm just sorry Twinkle was in the middle of it. I was a big fan of Twinkle back in her SRGMP days; I thought she sang really well, accepted all comments with dignity and a smile, and got eliminated way too early. (And that she had a striking face.) It's so strange to see her throwing a starry tantrum!

i always wanted to have an own brother!!i never tied anyone a rakhi ALL MY LIFE! but i even find it so weird ki how people can start off a full-fledged emotional bhai behen relationship with just anyone bcos of just one rakhi??!!sorry if i'm being too rude or insensitive,i just can't connect to this muh bola bhai thing!it seems just so unreal!

Hey Aspi!you know what?i actually missed being around!hehe:)waisey, on a more personal note,if u don't have a 'badi-behen',you've actually missed out on something very wonderful:)

j,exactly!i know some of my classmates tied rakhis to the guys in our class and then the guys get all so possesive and dominating over them.as if that's what they are supposed to do and that's how a 'bhai' should be!

eww all the guys who wanted to make me their 'rakhi sister' (gag) actually wanted to date me. eeks. one dude actually used the following pink-up line- " Excuse me, you look jes like my sister. Can we do frensip?" (this while staring the entire time at my teeshirt) :-p Cinderella, if a guy wants you to tie a rakhi, RUN RUN RUN!

It reminded me of long, long ago, when my husband and I were not yet an "item". It was Raksha Bandhan eve, and we were all hanging out at the usual adda, when a mutual friend asked the not-yet-husband material, if he would be at home the next day. His reply..."yaar, you know I never stay at home on Rakhi day, in case the girl I DON'T want as a sister shows up with a Rakhi."

okay i finally managed to watch that reality show where there was a fight

kaun jeetega whatever

that Puneet dude sooo had it coming.. i loved it when he almost got beaten up.. my mom was like "he got at least one punch didn't he?" hehehehe i was hoping that little twit would get a broken tooth at least..

also amrita singh! what is up with her bitchy attitude, she is so quick to call the young girls "cheap" and what have you.. umm i think she is disgruntled cuz her man/boy toy left her for a younger woman..

srsly she is sucha grade A bitch on the show..so much attitude!

she was rolling her eyes when some chick (who looked rly young..probably young enuff to be her daughter) went to get some water cuz she was rly nervous on stage during elimination..

The situation we'd in our engineering college was the one of the girls in the MM (Maha maal) category was the sister of the Bhai (picture a young Sunny Doel) and the only people who'd hang out with her were the other Bhai Log as other guys were off limits.

The situation eased when apna Sunny Bhai started getting special attention from other girls.